Whenever Nazi genocide is mentioned it’s seemingly always in reference to the Jews killed. This does make sense as they were the biggest Nazi target, the group with the highest genocidal death toll and the group with the largest percent of their population destroyed. However, it is still strange that the other ethnic groups that also had considerably high death tolls are seldom mentioned at all. When I learned about WWII in school, the other groups the Nazis victimized were mentioned very briefly and grouped all together. We didn’t go into nearly as much detail about their terrible treatment as to the treatment of the Jews, although they were often persecuted in the same way. Whenever there is online discussion about the Nazis it’s always about the Jews and I haven’t seen many articles about the other victims of the Nazis either. In fact, the one victimized group I do see mentioned apart from the Jews is homosexuals even though compared to ethnic-Poles, Slavs, and Romas they weren’t victimized nearly as much. So why are these other groups never mentioned? Is it because anti-semitism and homophobia are generally seen as bigger problems in modern society and the Nazi genocides are brought up mostly to warn of the dangers of these still held sentiments?
Hi there! You’ve asked a question along the lines of ‘why didn’t I learn about X’. We’re happy to let this question stand, but there are a variety of reasons why you may find it hard to get a good answer to this question on /r/AskHistorians.
Firstly, school curricula and how they are taught vary strongly between different countries and even even different states. Additionally, how they are taught is often influenced by teachers having to compromise on how much time they can spend on any given topic. More information on your location and level of education might be helpful to answer this question.
Secondly, we have noticed that these questions are often phrased to be about people's individual experience but what they are really about is why a certain event is more prominent in popular narratives of history than others.
Instead of asking "Why haven't I learned about event ...", consider asking "What importance do scholars assign to event ... in the context of such and such history?" The latter question is often closer to what to what people actually want to know and is more likely to get a good answer from an expert. If you intend to ask the 'What importance do scholars assign to event X' question instead, let us know and we'll remove this question.
Thank you!